Hmmmm, why indeed has this multi-hour epic that synchronizes image and sound a year before BIRTH OF A NATION never been discussed in the Annals of Silent Film History?

Perhaps------because------it's mostly a slide show. The only synchronized film bits are the lectures by Charles Taze Russell at the opening of each part, and they're not much better synchronized than the Edison talking pictures of 1913.

After looking at some of it, I realize that the people watching it were not convinced that the World was going to end after seeing it, they were just hoping the World would end.............

To be trapped in a room and watch that for four-plus hours. I love someone's brilliant idea on Nitratevile that there must be a black and white film version of it, and that that would be easier to transport than the slides and magic lantern. Well, as the slides sit there on the screen for quite some time, there would be much less of those than four-plus hours of 35mm film to go along with the 96 cylinders or discs of soundtrack, and trying to continually keep that much film synchronized in 1914 would be far more difficult than keeping the slides synchronized with the occasional film piece. It may be an interesting footnote in the history of multi-media presentation, but nothing more than that. I think the JW's do much better with the door to door and the Watchtower (though they stay away from my door since I chased one off my property years ago with a fire extinguisher).